Lori Loughlin recently pleaded guilty in an attempt to end her college admissions scandal. In doing so, she (technically) agreed to a few months’ worth of prison time (although, to be realistic, she might not serve time at all due to COVID-19 concerns). Her youngest daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli, has meanwhile been tiptoeing back onto Instagram, where she addressed the George Floyd protests this week in one of her Instagram stories. In doing so, she delivered a mini-lecture on how people should “use our WHITE PRIVILEGE” to end racism, and it did not go well.
“As a person who was born into privilege based on my skin color & financial situation, i was not always aware that these issues were still so present. And that makes me feel awful. But that also fuels me,” she typed. “I’m not racist and i never have been but i need to speak up about this because just not being racist isn’t enough. It outrages me. It makes me feel sick. It brings me to tears. THERE SHOULD NOT BE SUCH A GAP BETWEEN PEOPLE LIKE THIS. We need to support and stand up and speak and use our WHITE PRIVILEGE TO STOP THIS.”
A backlash ensued on the tone-deaf nature of Giannulli’s argument (which was not only shouty but unwieldy and full of judgment), if you look at the full screenshot below, with plenty of tweets like this one.
talk about a complete lack of self-awareness.
— BNJ (@brijo00) June 2, 2020
Essentially, people were not happy at Giannulli framing her argument as if she had never benefited (including her college entrance) from her own privilege. Us Weekly reports that she has responded by making a donation to the National Bail Out Fund (to bail out protesters) as part of the “BLM Donation Challenge.” She also posted a screenshot of her donation receipt and called upon several acquaintances and her older sister, Bella Rose Giannulli, to do likewise. It’s a small gesture, but an important one, although Olivia Jade will hopefully learn from this misstep. It certainly won’t hurt for her to step back from delivering lectures to do more listening before speaking.